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Talk:Enceladus Aerospace Fleet/@comment-11135771-20161125171152
Engineering Update: After significant deliberation, the decision has been made to replace half of the strike craft complement on most EAF carrier vessels with newly-developed unmanned "lancecraft". Conventional carrier-based strike craft design philosophy is adapted from the principles of atmospheric fighters launching from naval carrier vessels. However, as the role of our aerospace fleet has shifted continually farther toward exoatmospheric combat, such designs have become outdated and inefficient for many of their most common mission profiles - specifically, space superiority, anti-capital harassment, and interception of fast attack ships. Conventional aerospace fighters, although adequate for these roles, suffer from the limitation of being designed to support a human pilot. The human element greatly limits the near-infinite agility otherwise possible in the conditions of void combat, meaning that our advanced propulsion systems cannot realize their full potential. Furthermore, as human pilots are not considered an expendable element, any fighter must be capable of sufficient delta-v to return to safety after carrying out its mission, in addition to life support systems and armour. As such, we will be largely reassigning the exoatmospheric combat roles for light craft to the new lancecraft design, while our more conventional aerospace fighters will primarily be relegated to the role of "shallow water" combat within planets' atmospheres and fairly short distances beyond (generally no farther than orbit). This will help to optimize the efficiency of our strike craft, as the exoatmospheric light combat role will be largely taken over by the lancecraft which are more capable there. Meanwhile, our aerospace fighters will not require extended spaceflight capabilities, thus freeing up precious volume and mass which can be used to allow them significantly greater atmospheric combat capability. Lancecraft themselves are small, unmanned aerospace craft around half the size of a fighter and less than 1/4 of the cost, but capable of vastly improved agility and many times greater acceleration than piloted strike craft due to their pilotless nature. Piloted from control stations aboard the carrier vessel via FTL comms, or alternatively by AI (the majority of the processing hardware for which likewise resides aboard the carrier), lancecraft have all the advantages of piloted craft, without suffering the limitation of actually supporting a human pilot within their hull. The solitary armament of a lancecraft is an extremely powerful spinal-mounted single-shot chemical laser capable of punching through the outer hull of enemy capital ships, or utterly vaporizing smaller strike craft. Due to the weapon's nearly inevasible, instant-kill nature against light craft, it is extremely difficult for enemy fighters to "trade" efficiently against lancecraft. In a combat scenario against an equal number of enemy fighters, there is a good chance that every enemy could be eliminated immediately, with no losses to the lancecraft. The laser can be "reloaded" at the carrier vessel, if the lancecraft can be safely recovered. If not, the significantly lesser price and lack of human element associated with these craft when compared to piloted aerospace fighters means that their loss is relatively insignificant - a carrier's lancecraft complement can be fairly easily replenished even during combat via slipspace "cloud storage" containers. The changes described in the above report will be implemented effective immediately. - Adam Quinton, Head of Military Research and Development